Part Manager, Part Motivator

The Rangers' Ron Washington Is a Baseball Man Who Puts His Players First

By

Mike Sielski

Updated Oct. 19, 2010 12:01 a.m. ET

Ron Washington's first professional managerial job was, based on his players' ages, not much more than a babysitting assignment.

ENLARGE

The Rangers' record has improved each year Ron Washington has been their manager—from 75 wins three years ago to 90 this year.
AP

In 1993, after Mr. Washington had been a hitting coach in their organization for two years, the Mets put him in charge of the Capital City Bombers, a Single-A affiliate in Columbia, S.C. Fifteen of his players were 21 years old or younger.

The youngest was a 19-year-old wild-child pitcher whom the Mets were fast-tracking through their system, Bill Pulsipher. And to hear Mr. Pulsipher speak about that season was to wonder just how much Mr. Washington has changed as a manager over the successive 17 years.

"He knew his responsibilities as a manager were to get the very most out of his players," Mr. Pulsipher said by phone Monday, before the Texas Rangers, managed by Mr. Washington, took on the Yankees in Game 3 of the American League Championship Series.

"I always considered him a players' manager, but he expected you to play with enthusiasm and the passion he had for the game.''

Here's the dirty little secret about being a major-league manager: The decisions he makes during the game aren't necessarily the most important part of his job. Those moments often make for great barroom or living-room arguments.

Why didn't he pinch-hit for the pitcher?…Doesn't he know sacrifice bunting is a waste of time?

But over a month-and-a-half of spring training, a 162-game regular season, and potentially a month of postseason play, the manager's primary mission is to serve as something of a horse whisperer.

He must motivate, coax, cajole, reprimand, reward. He must persuade 25 rather wealthy young men who spend every day together that there's nothing better than spending every day together.

Put simply, he must cultivate a productive working environment. By that measure, Mr. Washington seems an unequivocal success.

The Rangers hired him in November 2006 and have improved each season since. Their win total rose from 75 three years ago to 90 this year, and they won a playoff series for the first time in franchise history by outlasting Tampa Bay in the Division Series.

Mr. Washington has even thrived in spite of the revelation earlier this year that he tested positive for cocaine in 2009—a transgression that seemed only to strengthen his relationship with his players.

"When I got the job here in Texas, I was a novice," said Mr. Washington, who managed for two years in the Mets' minor leagues before spending 11 years as a coach with the Oakland A's. "It was obvious I wasn't a manager, but I was a solid baseball man."

That is a nebulous term—baseball man. It connotes someone who has played the game, taught the game, been around the game for most of his life.

It also can be a limiting term, for it suggests there is a single way of thinking about the game. (It took a while for sabermetricians, for instance, to be regarded as baseball men instead of just those wacky numbers guys.)

Mr. Washington flashed this weakness in his team's 6-5 Game 1 loss on Friday night.

Desperate to snuff out a Yankees rally, he used five pitchers in the eighth inning—one pitcher for each run the Yankees scored in the frame. He lifted his starter, C.J. Wilson, after Mr. Wilson allowed an infield single and a ground-ball double. He lifted two relievers after each had thrown just one pitch. The Rangers were melting down, and all the while closer Neftali Feliz remained in the bullpen, as if he were a fire extinguisher beneath unbroken glass.

Why didn't Mr. Washington call on his best reliever at the game's most important moment?

He defended his decision not to use Mr. Feliz with an appeal to stability and calm: Mr. Feliz hadn't needed to record more than four outs to earn any of his 40 regular-season saves, and Mr. Washington wasn't about to let his team think he was panicking by using Mr. Feliz in an unfamiliar situation.

"More than anything else, you have to learn your players," he said. "It's not perfection. There are a lot of things that go wrong, and it's the tough guys who overcome things."

The next day, the Rangers proved so shaken and devastated by the loss that they beat the Yankees 7-2 to tie the series.

It wasn't ideal, to come away with one victory when two were there for the taking, but it was a situation a man who knows a manager can only do so much had long ago learned to live with.

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